


Date Night

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-10
Updated: 2010-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-08 20:19:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'What you fail to see,' Rodney said, 'is how utterly wrong you are.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Date Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dogeared](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogeared/gifts).



> Written for Jenn for her birthday. Thanks to Cate for beta reading!

"What you fail to see," Rodney said, "is how _utterly wrong you are_."

John cocked an eyebrow at him as he dumped another spoonful of sugar into his own mug. "That'd be because I'm _right_."

Rodney stabbed at the paper that lay between them with his spoon, drops of coffee spattering the page and blurring the lines of his hastily drawn diagram. He tossed the spoon down on the table. "It's all there in black and white! Proof! You cannot deny the power of my—"

"A crappy drawing is not proof of anything."

"It is empirical!" Rodney insisted, sprinkling some salt on his _lirvak_ stew. "Absolutely, positively—"

John settled back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. "Nothing about that has any relation to the scientific method, McKay."

Rodney looked down at his drawing—a schematic representation of how Serenity was absolutely a faster, more versatile ship than the Millennium Falcon. The spilled coffee had all but wiped out the Serenity, and the head of his stick figure Han Solo had become a little deformed. He felt himself deflate a little. "Okay, maybe it couldn't pass a peer review—"

John's half smile widened into a smirk. "Admit it. Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. It's a legend."

"You're insufferable," Rodney hissed at him, and took a first mouthful of stew. As usual for the meals the mess hall produced on the evening of the eighth day of the week ('Second Sunday', Rodney had named it after creating it in order to help align the new Atlantean calendar with the Earth and Athosian ones; John told him he was never to name anything ever again), it was reheated and a little rubbery, thrown together from the week's leftovers. Still, to an empty stomach after a day spent working on the city's desalination tanks, even Teyla's attempt at tuttle-root stew would have tasted good.

John looked insufferably smug, cheeks working as he chewed the last of his sandwich. "'S'me."

Rodney ate half the stew before him, then sat back to let it digest a little before he tackled the rest. His gaze wandered around the mess hall—at the setting sun flooding in through the big windows; the two nurses huddled over their laptops and a pot of coffee at one of the tables in the far corner—before something occurred to him. It was just after the end of second shift—"Where _is_ everyone?"

John shrugged. "Marines are playing Athosians out on the east pier."

"Oh. That..." Rodney waved a finger around in the air. "That bastardised American football-soccer-_jikahr_... thing?"

"Yup."

"Who's Ronon playing with?"

"Athosians."

"The Marines are going to have their asses handed to them," Rodney said firmly. "Jennifer had better have stocked up on that bruise liniment. Last time, Lorne couldn't sit down for a week."

"Eh, I think she's playing. Ronon taught her the rules. Says she's pretty hardcore."

Rodney considered and shrugged. "Well, she is from Wisconsin. But that doesn't explain where everyone else is."

"Teyla's off introducing Kanaan to the idea of a date night. Mehra and Xhao are, uh," John waggled a hand in an awkward gesture which meant _Mehra and Xhao are having a date night but I'm not supposed to know that one of my female officers has a girlfriend, so let's just pretend they're off playing Scrabble_. "You know. I think Woolsey's catching up on paper work. Chuck's on a date. Think Zelenka's dating that nurse from the infirmary. Parrish is seeing—"

Rodney squinted at him. "Did I inadvertently add hormones to the water supply when I was working on the desalination tanks? What's with all the, you know... libido?"

John scratched at the nape of his neck, not quite meeting Rodney's eyes. "It's spring."

"Yes," Rodney said, "thank you, as if my sinuses hadn't already alerted me to the rising pollen count."

"No need to be snippy," John said, shifting in his chair.

"This is not _snippy_," Rodney said, "When am I ever snippy? Don't answer that. I'm just saying—isn't it weird? Don't you think it's weird that everyone's off doing... stuff? I mean, even the people who aren't doing stuff right _now_ are going to be doing stuff _later_—Ronon thinks pretty much any high-contact sport is a bizarre form of foreplay. And yet here the two of us are, sitting in the mess hall drinking bad coffee on date night."

John's face scrunched up for a moment, then he said, "Well, what else are you gonna do?"

Rodney thought about it, but nothing came to mind. This was how he spent almost all of his evenings—in the mess or in his quarters, watching movies in the rec room or tinkering with his remote control cars, playing video games and reading comics, and whether he was with his team or with more people or it was just the two of them, John was a constant. "Not much," he admitted.

There was a moment's silence, and then John hitched a shoulder and said, "Hey, I got some beer back in my quarters. Want to pick 'em up, go play with the cars?"

"If this is that piss you people call—"

John held up his hands in mock surrender. "Not domestic, buddy. Some of the stuff Ronon sourced on PX5-5847."

Rodney felt his eyes widen. Bottles of Rethapi beer were already being used as currency on Atlantis, it was that good. "I'm in."

They picked up several bottles from John's quarters, and Rodney didn't have to pester him too much before he gave up his stash of Doritos. They headed out to their usual spot – the east pier might be overrun with sports-happy idiots, but the north pier was quiet and open and the ideal place to engage in a truly epic contest.

"A battle of the wills," Rodney said, arranging chips and beer around him at the optimal distance for easy snacking while still being able to achieve a crushing and undeniable victory.

"You really suck at talking trash, you know that?" John said, sitting down next to him.

"You're just trying to distract me from your inevitable defeat, aren't you?"

"How big a percentage of your salary do you owe me, anyway?"

"None of those bets have been binding in a court of law," Rodney said quickly, "plus at least thirty per cent of those so-called victories are still in dispute."

"Sore loser," John said, opening his first beer and taking a long swallow. Rodney watched the line of his throat work as he drank, and then tried to blink away the distraction.

"Sore... winner," he said limply, before steeling his resolve. "Prepare to get your ass handed to you, sir."

"Freak," John said fondly, and then clearly propelled his car forwards before Rodney had said 'go'.

The agreed-on course ran away down the pier from them, around the projection of a skylight, up over a low rise and back towards where they sat—five hundred yards of swearing, trash talking, and John trying to push Rodney over onto his side to break his concentration and make him drop his remote control. "Quit it, Sheppard!" Rodney said, trying his best not to get distracted at the feeling of the warmth of John's side pressed up against him. "This is serious business!"

"Uh huh," John said, poking his tongue out the side of his mouth. There was a brief pause as both of them leaned forward, urging their cars on the last few yards—and John's crossed the finish line first. "And I believe I just seriously beat you."

"You cheated!"

Rodney was quite sure that no one would believe him if he said that a full colonel in the US Air Force who was pushing fifty was capable of pulling a face like that—and yet, as ever, John was fully in touch with his inner twelve year old. "You're just a sore loser!"

"You're a..." Rodney sputtered, unable to think of a word capable of encompassing John's sheppardishness. "Give me another beer."

John handed over another bottle. "Fine, but you can't use the fact that you're a cheap drunk as an excuse when I leave you in the dust again."

Rodney snorted. "Please. I am not a cheap drunk—or a cheap date, for that matter."

"Never thought that about you," John said, but Rodney wasn't really listening. Something had happened in the instant after Rodney had spoken; John's gaze had flickered over Rodney's face—over his _mouth_—and Rodney had felt something turn over in his stomach in response. The realization— when it came— was stunning and simple and god, Rodney thought, looking around them—at the full moon and the water and the fact that it was _date night on Atlantis_—thinking back on the past six years and everything that had passed between them—was it really this simple? But this was empirical!

"Earth to McKay," he heard John say, and blinked to find John snapping his fingers an inch in front of his nose.

Rodney swatted at his hand. "Is this a _date_?" he demanded.

John turned pale; his expression hardly changed, but there was something distant about him all of a sudden, something closed off. "Listen," he said, voice careful in the way it always got when he was lying, "I don't know where you got that idea, but—"

"Shut up," Rodney said, "Don't lie to me. Do not! I know you, John Sheppard."

John's expression turned mutinous, mulish. "What makes you think—"

"Stop being such a goddamned idiot," Rodney said, pointing at his mouth, "and kiss me." He hadn't had time for more than an initial consideration of all the possible outcomes here, but he had a theory—based on reconsidered memories, on the close and constant orbit of John's body around his, on the slow heat that was building low in Rodney's belly—that they were all likely to be great.

John spluttered. "What am I, a trained monkey?"

"Oh, for the love of Einstein," Rodney said, rolling his eyes and grabbing John by the flimsy cotton of his t-shirt, tugging him closer and kissing him until they were both breathless. John's mouth was chapped against his, his stubble rough against the palms of Rodney's hands, and the way the breath hitched in the back of his throat was unbearably hot. "See? You see," he said when he pulled back, opening his eyes, "This is totally a date. Totally. Because you want me, right? You want—"

"_Rodney_," John said, sounding exasperated and scared and more than a little bit happy, sounding like he was saying _yes_. Maybe he'd been saying yes for a while now, and Rodney just hadn't seen it. Rodney grinned at him and kissed him again, brief and heartfelt, because he didn't think he'd ever seen a smile like that on John's face—unrestrained and joyous; fine lines around his eyes crinkling up—and it was kind of impossible not to respond to happiness like that.

"You know, if you are going to _blatantly cheat_ at racing," Rodney said with calculated casualness, as John leaned in towards him for the first time, gaze flickering between Rodney's mouth and his eyes, "the very least you can do is put out."

"The very least," John agreed affably, and kissed him.


End file.
